British team defeats Germans to win World Marble Championship

CRAWLEY, England - British team the Yorkshire Meds,’ captured the World Marbles Championship on Friday after last year’s winner, Germany’s the 1st MC Erzgebirge, was knocked out in the semi-finals.

The championship, which has been held at Tinsley Green in West Sussex since 1932, is thought to have been played at the site for hundreds of years.

Competing teams of six players each try to knock out 49 marbles placed on a six-foot (1.8 meter) circular concrete slab covered with sand in the parking lot of The Greyhound pub. A point is earned for each marble ejected from the ring by the tolley, or shooting marble. The first team to reach 25 points wins.

“It’s like snooker without a cue,” said organizer Sam McCarthy Fox, “so what you do is use the tip of your finger to project the marble and you can get back spin, side spin, top spin and it’s just the skill of going in and knocking a few marbles out.”